Natalie's Transition

A couple of years ago Natalie Berry asked if I’d be keen to show her some trad climbing places around Scotland as she was making a move from competition climbing into trying out trad and general mountain adventures. Of course I was delighted to climb with her and along the way, the Hot Aches crew of Paul Diffley and Chris Prescott followed her progress and the fun times we had. The trailer above is for the film which is now finished and premiering at the Kendal festival shortly. We’ll see you there if you are coming.

The process nearly fell at the first hurdle thanks to my ineptitude at catching a tiny crimp properly on Hold Fast Hold True (E9) in Glen Nevis. It was the very first day Nat and I climbed together. Nat did her first trad lead and then we climbed another few pitches before I decided to go for Hold True. I was actually climbing it really well and was almost distracted by the fact that I’d just dispatched the crux totally static. Then I just caught a crimp one finger-width to the right of where I should. A tiny error. My left ankle was already in a sub-optimal state after a fall 15 odd years before. Landing on it again from a great height didn’t help it much at all. I was seriously not happy with myself for making an error at one of the worst possible moments, not least because of how the experience of watching someone fall earthward might affect Natalie. It’s not really in the ‘mentor’ job description.

However, she still wanted to climb with me (once I’d had surgery) and so we went on to have quite a few nice trips to some amazing corners of our islands. We did quite a few mega classics, got freezing cold on ice routes, got too warm on melting ice routes, took falls, went for long runouts, opened new routes and stood on top of the Ben on a perfect day after a fine ice climb. It kind of led up to Natalie’s ascent of Dalriada on the Cobbler just a few weeks ago, a fantastic effort in very cold late season conditions. 

The film is great because you don’t normally get to see someone as they progress right through from fumbling wires on a hard severe, to calmly running it out on mountain E7 in the mist, while shivering away from the cold.

It was a pleasure to watch Nat’s progress unfold. It’s always a pleasure to watch great climbers progress - when they have talent and a determination to see through what they started, you know they will get there in the end. Watching the film back also made me want to have more trips like those, if Nat will tie on the the rope with me again. I promise I wont fall off and hit the deck, and will leave the crag before it’s totally dark!

If you are at Kendal, I'm speaking there at 10am on Sat 21st. Transition is premiering at 7.30pm on Friday 20th. All the details are on the Kendal site here.

Project Fear film

Here is the Project Fear film about my new route on Cima Ovest last September. Truth be told, I was incredibly lucky that myself and Alan Cassidy were able to get the route climbed given the very poor weather in the Dolomites last season. Of course, to a certain extent we made our own luck as you see in the film, my cleaning and preparing the route through the poor weather rather than just sitting waiting.

However, the two sunny days we had were a crucial ingredient and I was desperate to make them count. I’m sure you’ll understand that my favourite part of the film are the parts playing with Freida at home in Glen Nevis. But this it is also a great memory of the adventures on that massive roof. It gets me psyched for summer's big wall expedition will be rather bigger in scale.

A special thanks to Mountain Equipment for supporting our trip and the film idea, Karl for exploring the roof with me and dodging the blocks I knocked off, Alan for coming with me on the route and the Coldhouse guys for being great craic and teaching me a lot.

Testing Gore-Tex Pro ME jackets on the Ben

Why we use GORE-TEX® Pro from MOUNTAIN EQUIPMENT on Vimeo.

Some filming we did on Ben Nevis on the spring talking about why Mountain Equipment use Gore-Tex Pro for it’s shell jackets and how we dream up, design and test the jackets. Interesting to hear a bit more detail about the tech that goes into fabrics and jackets.

Waiting for Autumn

While I have been waiting for the summer to come to an end and the season for climbing on small holds to begin, I’ve been trying to sort some things out. To be honest, I’ve been feeling a bit fed up with how the summer has gone. Having said that, the battles have been enjoyable. I could so easily have had very different results on a couple of hard projects had conditions been right at the right moment. But it didn’t happen. I particularly thought on quite a few attempts that I was going to get my Steall project. On reflection though, I don’t feel I really did enough to deserve it just yet. Also I went to look at a couple of cliffs I hoped would have another great hard trad new route for me, but they were a bit disappointing. Outside of climbing, I have written a lot of book which is good although much work remains and progress has been rather slow.

I signed another three year contract with Mountain Equipment which is really great and gives me an opportunity to keep pushing myself in my climbing. I have been thinking a lot about my training going into the colder months and what moves to make next. This summer has been the first that I haven’t felt my fingers getting stronger. I know that it’s down to just going climbing on physically ‘easy’ trad routes for a long time and not doing any training since my elbows weren’t up to it. Already I’m noticing some small gains since I’ve been healthy and able to start basic strength work again. But my body is feeling like it will take some time to get used to strength training again.

After speaking at the St Anton festival in Austria last week I had a few days in Magic Wood. The objective was just to pull hard on powerful crimpy moves as much as possible before going back to Scottish projects. It’s just as well, since the conditions were pretty bad. After a few days moping about looking at wet projects and climbing damp boulders, there was one day of decent conditions. I could do Darkness to Sunshine (8A/+) quickly and then worked on some harder things without success. I spent an hour or so trying Remembrance of Things Past (8B+) which is exactly the opposite of my climbing strengths. There’s not a lot of opportunity to lean on technique and get weight on your feet, but raw finger strength is the order of the day. It was still quite wet but I could see I probably would struggle to do it even in good conditions. On the other hand, the moves didn’t feel impossible so I don’t think a huge gain in strength to weight ratio would be needed to manage this level. I’d love to try this again sometime after a winter back on the fingerboard.

I super motivated for this season to get back into basic strength training and see what possibilities it opens up. I’ve also spent a lot of time recently reading to expanding my knowledge of sports nutrition and feel like I’ve learned a lot there with much potential to do the hardest stage - putting new knowledge into practice.

Lectures in February

The last of my lectures for a while are happening in February - see you at some of these hopefully:

This Saturday (Jan 28^th) I’m speaking at Rheged in the Lakes. Details and tickets here.

On February 3^rd I’ll be in the audience for a change while Claire gives the lecture! She is speaking at Roy Bridge Memorial Hall, 7.30pm about her mountain film making adventures and jumping out of planes. Tickets on the door - £4 and you’ll also get some food and a cup of tea!

On February 8^th I’m speaking along with Andy Turner and Paul Diffley at the Royal Geographical Society in London about the Long Hope. After the lecture we’ll show the film too and there will be an opportunity to gather for a good chat at the bar during the evening. Details and tickets here.

On February 24^th I’m speaking in Hoy Kirk, Hoy, Orkney about the Long Hope and showing the film. Looking forward to being back on the island! It’ll be a good chance for me to explain to everyone I saw out and about around Orkney what all the fuss was about that kept me returning to St John’s head trip after trip. Start time 6.30pm.

After that I’m away on a long climbing trip. See you there!

On lecture tour next week

Racked up for rigging the Longhope Route - more of Lukasz’ pictures of this route in my lectures next week.

All of next week I’m travelling around doing talks each evening in a different part of the UK. Maybe I’ll see some of you?! Mostly I’ll be talking about the importance of taking on massive projects like the Long Hope route on Orkney. Big projects like that and a few other hard climbs I’ll show you involve a lot of doubt - you just don’t know if you’ve got enough to finally do them (unless they are too easy!). Dealing with that doubt is a big psychological challenge. My experience has been that there’s more than one successful mindset to adopt. I‘ll explain more at the talks.

First up, I’m going round Scotland, speaking at various Tiso stores on a Mountain Equipment tour. Details and tickets are here, but the dates are:

Monday 24th Inverness Tiso Outdoor experience 7.30pm

Tuesday 25th Aberdeen Tiso 7.30pm

Wednesday 26th Perth Tiso Outdoor experience 7.30pm

Thursday 27th Glasgow Tiso GOE 7.30pm

Friday 28th Edinburgh Tiso Outdoor experience 7.30pm

On Saturday I’m speaking twice at the SAFOS seminar on decision making in avalanche terrain at EICA Ratho. First up I’m speaking about my approaches and ideas to managing risk in my trad climbing. I’ll discuss some of the times I’ve nearly killed myself climbing, and what I did wrong, and some of the times I climbed really dangerous routes safely, like The Indian Face. Details of this here - There are some great speakers lined up on risk and decision making.

On Sunday I’m at Dart Rock near Exeter doing coaching clinics (Sunday and Monday) and  on Sunday evening I’m speaking there. 

See you out there!

Lecture next week in Manchester

Next Thursday I’m doing a lecture at the Mountain Equipment store in Manchester. All the details are above. It’s been up on ME’s facebook for a couple of days so there are only about 10-15 tickets left I’ve just heard. So get in there quick. Tickets are free - just ring the store on the number on the poster or register on the facebook page. See you there!

Seismic shifts in Lochaber

My alarm had just gone off at 6am and I was working up to getting myself moving after another late night working till 2 when there was a bump in the night. Well, more of a shaking. As everything around us started to shake more and more, we looked at each other and Claire was the first to come out and say “Is that an earthquake!?”

A bit of vibration was all it was and it took the BBC news later on to confirm it was indeed an earthquake of 3.4 magnitude. Their news report said some peoples cats around Lochaber had gone mad. Ours wasn’t fussed at all, but I’m not sure what that says about the cat...

On Carn Mor Dearg yesterday with the Mountain Equipment winter skills course.

Mountain Equipment Ts are here

Our fresh stock of Mountain Equipment Pro-Team T-shirts arrived just before Christmas. It’s a short run from ME and we are due to get more sometime in the spring. But just to say the current lot are selling fast, so if you want one get it now. There are 3 male mediums left at the moment!

Claire has added chest sizes for them on their page in the shop so you can be sure which size is right. We have been impressed with the quality of the new run of T-shirts, great quality organic cotton and a little ‘heavier’ cotton and crisper print than the previous batches. In the shop here.

[UPDATE] The mediums are now sold out for now. Small is a chest size 28 and large is 42.

Christmas orders

More and more of you are asking each day about our last posting dates for Christmas from our shop. Claire is dispatching every day as usual, via Royal Mail. If you’re ordering within the UK then you ought to get your order in by last thing Monday night (20th) to make sure it’s there before Christmas. Please be aware things are sometimes taking a little longer as Royal Mail still seem to be delayed in a few places by the snowy weather. 

We’re expecting new stock of the Mountain Equipment Pro-team T-shirts later today and will put  all the sizes up in the shop as soon as they arrive. We've been out of men's sizes in these for ages and I know lots of you asked when they were coming back.

As always, if you want anything signed, just ask, in the special instructions field of the PayPal checkout. Thanks to everyone who’s ordered from us recently. Claire’s been doing a great job in the office getting everything out in double quick time every morning.

ME Slackline sets are here too

I’ve just uploaded the new Slackline sets from Mountain Equipment to our shop right here. They have been super popular for ME and so they’ve updated them again this year. There are three sets, the Pro, Passion and Chill. We are getting the Chill in shortly when the new stock arrives at ME.

Both the Pro and Passion sets have a 25mm wide slackline with 3m padded anchor slings and heavy duty ratchets for racking them up. The Passion is 18 metres long and the Pro is 25m. Enjoy!

New colours in the ME beanies

We just got in a lot of new colours in our Mountain Equipment beanies ready for the coming winter. They are in the shop now right here.

In the books section I’ve added Eric Horst’s new book on mental skills for climbers - Maximum Climbing which is just out. It’s a very up to date and comprehensive guide to theory and practice in the psychology of performance in climbing. Horst has drawn on the developments in behavioral and cognitive psychology which has come on a lot in the past few years. Interesting reading (review on the way on OCC soon).